Featured planetary moon
Ariel
A bright Uranian moon cut by valleys and fault systems.
Ariel has one of the youngest-looking surfaces among Uranus’s major moons. Long canyons and smoother plains indicate that tectonic and cryovolcanic processes altered older cratered terrain.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- derived map
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 578.9 km
- Mean orbital distance
- 190,929 kmSemi-major axis around the parent body.
- Orbital period
- 2.52 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.001
- Inclination
- 0°Uranus equator at J2000
- Rotation
- Tidally locked
World portrait
A surface renewed after impact history
Ariel’s brightness and fractured landscape provide a counterpoint to darker Umbriel, even though both orbit within the same tilted planetary system.
System geometry
Ariel in motion around Uranus
Ariel travels at a mean orbital distance of 190,929 km and completes a circuit in 2.52 days. Its eccentricity of 0.001 and 0° inclination are read against Uranus equator at J2000. Synchronous rotation keeps the same hemisphere broadly oriented toward the parent body.
Representation notes
What Explore is showing
JPL fitted mean elements describe general orbit shape and orientation; they are not an accurate ephemeris.
Reviewed official partial imagery prepared as a 1K display texture. Unobserved areas are softly completed from the observed hemisphere so the globe remains natural-looking in motion; the body summary identifies those regions as reconstructed rather than directly observed. Final seam, pole and landmark review remains device-dependent.
Provenance